#grass talks

i'd love to! this is a long one haha.. (@anonym-potato)

disclaimer

please note that i am only theorizing, and that i am a system host myself, so don't cancel me. also: please don't tag this post as anything relating to the DID/OSDD community in your reblogs! thanks!

key

for future reference in this post, i thought i'd need a key of some kind.

red = personal experiences

orange = scientific evidence

green = assumptions based on canon lore

blue = historical context

pink = minis

headcanons/interpretations

i'm basing this off of the assumption that bren and caleb alone are a system, but there could always be more.

• bren is caleb's alter, despite being the born identity. in my system, host-switches (the act of the title of "host" being given to another alter through constant fronting or a retire of position) are fairly common, one happening every few years. it's completely possible that caleb, through constant fronting (or forced fronting), has adopted the title of "host" from bren, leaving bren nearly powerless to take it back for himself.

• he went to the sanitorium for having DID, not for being insane. throughout history, it has been said that people that were seen as less than neurotypical were sent to asylums and sanitoriums (there's a difference!!) to be "fixed" and to churches to be "exorcised." in d&d, you play as characters in medieval times, where this practice was most prevalent. to medical professionals at the time, seeing a switch of any caliber could yield "unstable" behavior, which could've lead to his hospitalization. maybe he was insane when he left, but he definitely wasn't when he went in.

the eleven years. the time spent in the sanitorium is entirely blocked off from his mind, and nearly impossible, even with caleb's eclectic memory, to recall. DID has few requirements, yes, but arguably one of the most important symptoms is dissociative amnesia. this amnesia occurs during high stress situations that can constitute as trauma or while one isn't fronting, both of which are caused by dissociation (directly or indirectly). for the purposes of these theories, i'd say it's a mixture of the two.

the "cure." while caleb was recalling his time at the hospital, he remembered that there was a woman that helped him get rid of the "cloudiness" from his mind. DID is a trauma based disorder caused by amnesia. "getting rid" of his trauma would cause amnesia. keeping his trauma would cause amnesia. it's a paradox with no happy ending. as a result, all the woman got rid of, in my opinion, was his vegetative state. this is why there are still times where you could conclude that caleb is still unstable. there's many of these moments in c2 so i'd rather not sift through them all.

• DID and its causes. intense, repeated traumatic experiences during childhood/early adolescence (around 7-11, with a few years error) causes DID. according to the timeline of his backstory, he was approached by the representatives of the soltryce academy at around 9 years old, which means he started working with ikithon at 10. this puts him just under the threshold of the most apparent developmental stage for this disorder.

• "caleb widogast" seems like such a fake name, not even with alias standards.

• caleb has been seen dissociating for hours at a time. if you're new to the program: after fights where he gets a hdywtdt on a humanoid while using pyromancy, caleb has to make a wisdom saving throw to avoid dissociation. this dissociation could last for hours, whether it be active dissociation (blankness while doing menial tasks) or full dissociation (unable to move, talk, or think). only something intense could snap him out of it, whether it be a slap of the face or a kiss on the head (that scene lives rent free in my head).

• some of caleb's attributes are changed from time to time. caleb likes a lot of things: bread, the scraggly hobo life, books, and numbers, to name a few, though there are times where some of these likes get shifted into obsessions, where caleb likes spellcasting, but bren loves the idea of staying up late and working on a spell with no sleep (and that counts as a point of exhaustion for both of them, not just one, because they share the body and therefore have to take care of it). it's not either of their faults, its just how they were conditioned during the time of their trauma.

• caleb has canonically talked to himself in the third person.

• constant polymorphs and shapeshifting alters. in my system, there is a veth fictive that can shapeshift between "veth" and "nott." she has admitted to using this ability to stay "front-stuck" (where an alter physically cannot switch out) because she can't switch when out of her "true form." now think of it like this: caleb and polymorph, especially in recent history. there's a tag going around, reading "*polymorphs into a creature to stupid to be depressed*" in reference to caleb's now constant use of the spell. it could just be us, but its still something to think about.

• there has been a "switch" in canon. i mentioned in the original post that there was a scene in canon where caleb has been seen switching, as a result of a confrontation from trent ikithon and the cerberus assembly. (don't mind the watermark im not rich)

updated the shop 🫡 https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/baicaozhe/